If your email inbox is like mind, you probably get 5 or more emails per day that hawk different Internet marketing methods. One thing is common about every spam email you receive that tries to sell you on some revolutionary marketing scheme namely, they all want money. None of these Internet marketing systems that they bill as a cant miss method will be offered to you free. Some methods do work, but usually for a host of reasons, they may not work for you.
So what if youre on a shoestring budget and cant afford to spend a lot of money, or no money, on Internet advertising Are there any free systems that work Yes, Im please to say that there are and Id like to introduce you to free marketing methods that really work and that you can implement on your own.
1. Submit a sitemap to Google Visit https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login and setup a free account to publish your sitemap to Google. Directions on how to generate a sitemap that meets Googles criteria can be found at https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/sitemap-generator.html. Once youve successfully submitted a complete sitemap of your site to Google youll find that youll get better and more accurate crawl service by Googles crawler, which will usually visit your site within 2 hours of posting a sitemap successfully. Dont pay others large sums of money to guarantee you a listing in Google when you can execute each of the marketing methods listed in this article by yourself, for free.
2. Create and write a blog Create a subdirectory under the root directory of your main domain and name the subdirectory blog. Each day post a new article (i.e., page) that has content relevant to the main theme of your domain. Each time you post a new page visit Pingomatic.com and ping it with the url address of your blog. You can automate the entire blog and ping process by installing a free open source program called Wordpress in your blog directory. Each time Pingomatic is pinged with notification of new content on your blog, Pingomatic in turn pings 20 different blog directories. These search engine crawlers of Yahoo, MSN and Google visit these directories regularly and will come across your url addresses. Begin monitoring the stats of your domain before and after you complete this process and youll begin to see each of these search engines begin to crawl your website on a regular basis.
3. Write and submit free reprint articles - Since the beginning of the Internet this has been the most successful free publicity a webmaster can use. Simply write articles and publish them on free article networks like ArticleCity.com, GoArticles.com and EzineArticles.com, complete with an About the Author section that contains a link back to your website. Publishing your articles on these article distribution sites is done with the understanding that other webmasters can post your article on their website (i.e., free reprint rights), provided they leave the information about the author section, complete with links to your site intact. As more people publish your article youll get more free backward links to your website without having to agree to reciprocal linking to others websites. This is viewed very favorably by the major search engines and over time youll see your Google Page Rank value increase as more people publish your articles and link to your website.
4. Post comments and questions to forums with high page ranks Search for forums and discussion boards that cover the same topics that you cover on your domain. Make sure you have installed Googles free toolbar on your browser. If you dont have it you can get it for free at http://toolbar.google.com/. Once you have it installed make sure you have the Page Rank function activated on the toolbar. Googles algorithms now place little emphasis on websites that link to you with a page rank of 3 or less. Look for forum pages that have a page rank of 4 or more and post a comment or start a thread on a forum page that has a page rank of 4. You will rely on the Google toolbar to tell you what the page rank is on every web page you visit from now on. Only focus on getting links to your site from Google page rank 4 or higher. Youll be surprised how many blogs and forums that have a page rank of 4 or higher and allow you to post comments and questions for free, and allow you to include a hyperlink to your website.
5. Syndicate your content with an RSS feed. - This article is not an RSS tutorial, but there are hundreds of them online. Begin reading all you can about RSS (really simple syndication) and create free RSS feeds for your website. This will allow other websites to post headlines and short summaries of content from your website, complete with links back to your website. Each time you add or update content the headlines and summary content on their websites with automatically update with your new content. Youll be surprised how much extra traffic you can get once you start syndicating your content, both from search engines that find links to you in the RSS headlines located on websites syndicating your content, and direct from search engines that will be crawling your domain more once they begin finding more links back to your site via the RSS syndication process.
These are just a few free Internet marketing methods that can increase your web traffic by leaps and bounds if you spend the time to implement and manage them. Just these 5 Internet marketing methods and strategies alone will bring you more traffic than you could ever imagine, if you manage them regularly.
Craig Whitley is a freelance writer covering consumer products, services and trends, and is a contributing editor to He frequently writes topical reviews on good-content websites that provide consumers with useful free information on how to succeed online.
Do you think you know who your biggest, baddest and most sinister competitor is online Believe it or not, its not other marketers. Its not spam filters either. Nor is it the bad customers, sleazy business partners or time-suckers who try their hardest to control your life.
No, your biggest competitor is much worse -- much more dangerous and powerful -- than all those combined. In fact, all the above put together is like a kiss from your grandma compared to the sheer power and ruthlessness of the real competitor we all face when we do business online today.
Who is this vicious Internet nemesis
The answer is simple: Its the endless amount of government red tape and bureaucratic meddling - all the way from your local city ordinances to international law. Its true. The more government sticks its fingers in the piethe more out of control the laws will get, the harder it will be for the smaller businesses to make money, and the more dangerous it will be to even try.
If you dont think it can happen to the Internet, think again. Its already happening. Its happened to every cheap media ever invented. From infomercialsto 900 numbersto broadcast FAXand now - after the draconian do not call list here in the U.S. - even the telephone. Its only a matter of time before some major roadblocks are thrown up for Internet marketers. Roadblocks that are going to put a serious damper on your ability to milk money from the Web.
Which is why I really believe people should work hard at mastering direct response marketing and copywriting first, and the Internet-specific stuff second. Just ask yourself, what exactly would I dohow would my business surviveif the Internet was taken away from me tomorrow If you cant answer that question, then you need to study less Internet-specific tactics and more direct response marketing and copywriting tactics. Because if you have your head on straight about how direct response marketing works, then it wont matter what media you use.
Now dont get me wrong. Im not saying we shouldnt use the Internet to make a ton of money. And Im not saying people shouldnt keep up on the Internet tactics at the same time. Thatd be foolish. Just dont rely on it exclusively. Recognize the Web for what it is: just one of many tools to sell and build a list of customers with.
In that respect, its no different than running a small classified ad or dropping a letter in the mail. Sure, its extremely fast and cheap. Sure you can literally make money online in less than five minutes if you know what youre doing. And sure you can instantly access tens of millions of peoplefor mere pocket changeyou might never have been able to access before.
But to rely on the Internet exclusively could be very dangerous to you, your business and your income. Just ask all the people who were making millions of dollars per year using nothing but broadcast FAX or telemarketing. One day they were raking the money in hand over fist. The next they were out of business, living with their parents and parking cars for a living.
Ben Settle is an expert copywriter and direct marketer. If you liked this article then check out Bens website at -- where youll find over 500 pages of advertising ideas, strategies and tactics just like this one -- as well as rare swipe file ads and hot marketing information not easily found anywhere else.